Eamon Adventure Reviews 51-100

Reviewed by Dan Cross (NEUC May 1985)Reviewer’s Rating:7Difficulty Rating: 8Extra Commands: nonePlaying Time: 2-3 hours
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go back to the days of your childhood?, your youth?, or more importantly, back to the Beginner’s Cave? We’ve all heard the expression "You can never go back". Have you ever tried only to be stopped by William Missilefire? Oh sure, you can create a new character and start all over again, but have you ever dreamed of what it would be like to take that seasoned adventurer you’ve painstakingly build over the last couple of years, back to where it all began?For obvious reasons, the Beginner’s Cave has to be one of the most oft-played scenarios. Surely, we must know it by heart! So Eamon Bluff is going to play to a pretty tough audience, right? Only a first-rate story teller could pull this one off. It’s the same everything and yet, it’s not the way you remember it. "You are at the mouth of a dark cave set into the hillside. A sign above you says (..ginn.rs..nly).. and goes south here into the mouth. Another sign here is splattered with blood with a skull and crossbones etched in it". Thus begins your destiny with déjà vu. Make no mistake, this is not a rip-off. You know the old saying, just when you think you’ve seen it all before, etc. Eamon Bluff is the perfect time machine. H.G. Wells couldn’t have done it better. Tim Berge not only allows you to adventure into the past, but more specifically creates a journey through YOUR past. And this is what I liked best. I don’t know about you, but I suspect if we compared skeletons in our closets I’m not the only one who would like to go back and make things right. In the Beginner’s Cave I took anything and everything I could get. I stopped at nothing, not even murder. I killed the very friends that helped me through the cave, with one exception, Cynthia (for the reward of course. I wanted to sell their weapons so I could get even more money. Take, take, take, you get the picture. I know by now you’re probably asking yourself, among other things, Is it really possible to go back and change the past? And if so how will that affect my future? To find out, ‘borrow’ that horse again and wake up those monsters with the new battle-cry "Forward into the Past!!!".

Reviewed by Steve Mahr (NEUC May 1985)Reviewer’s Rating:5Difficulty Rating: 3Extra Commands: Read, Drink, Open, KissPlaying Time: 1-1.5 hoursAs I left the Main Hall, I was approached by a rather vile character who offered to show me a secret dungeon containing riches. With nothing better to do, and the chance for an extra buck, I took him up on his offer. I wasn’t disappointed. It was a smaller dungeon, 55 rooms, with good descriptions. The maze was not difficult to follow and "Look" did not find the secret passages. I actually had to think; an unreasonable requirement for a mead and wench loving adventurer. The monetary rewards of this dungeon were not tremendous, but there were other benefits. And what a surprise I got when I tried to….. but that would be telling. A battle scarred veteran would probably get a bit bored and be wishing for a skin of wine (I brought my own) and a fair wench (I tried, but she refused). There were not a lot of monsters to vanquish, but some of the ones I met were certainly not pushovers. All in all, The Devil’s Dungeon is a fairly good adventure, especially for one of the older Eamons. (Although the number is 52, this adventure was around for quite some time before it was added to the catalog. When I asked John [Nelson] why it was around a long time, he grumbled something and said ‘shut up and write’.) I would recommend it, especially for a novice player.

Description: "Your and your friends spent last night together in the Main Hall celebrating the Feast of Carroll, the one day each year when all three of Eamon's moons are full.

"You must have enjoyed yourself a little more than you intended, because now you don't know where you are, and you can't remember how you got here. All that you know, for sure, is that you are in a very mysterious place!"

Comment: This is a fairly interesting and not too difficult foray into the worlds of Lewis Carroll and fairy tales in general. The bad guys are few and pretty easy. There are a couple of minor puzzles.

The little gimmicks are clever and funny, and overall I did enjoy the play. Read everything you can, and try your POWER spell when all else fails (and "not• before!), and you shouldn't have any real trouble. One item: the way the "Excalibur" code is written, there is only a one in four chance that you will be able to get the sword, and you only get one chance at it. If you don't get the sword, the KNIGHT command is inoperative. But don't worry if you don't get the sword; it's not a very big deal.

While I give this one a (4) for difficulty, the puzzles are subtle enough that they may be over the heads of very young Eamonauts.

Description: "While reading this month's issue of Adventure Monthly, you come across an article about the legendary Crystal Kingdom. It gives the standard info. Location, probability of truth (73%), and legendary treasures: a black pearl necklace, a great diamond, and the Crystal Sword (legend says it will make the holder invincible).

"Since you are brave, daring, and broke!, you decide to search out Crystal Mountain, seat of power for the Crystal Kingdom. After much searching you find an entrance. Just as you enter you trip on a wire and there is a low rumble. Cave in!"

Comment: This is a largish 85-room dungeon with several small mazes, a couple of death traps, and several minor puzzles that revolve around the special command list. It has a good map and a fair number of spelling errors.

I enjoyed the mazes; they are the really bad sort with identical descriptions and names and totally mixed-up room connections, but they are only a few rooms each and not too difficult to solve with persistence. There is a good bit of special stuff involving such items as levers, keys, doors, cells, and buttons.

The mazes, a death trap or two, the modified FLEE command, and a very strong dragon run the difficulty up to about (7). Here are some hints: LIGHT turns the lantern on and off so you don't have to drop it; don't forget your POWER spell; the Crystal Sword is an exceptional magical weapon, but it does not make you invincible!

There is no Quest other than simple escape, but I suggest that you make your own by recovering the items listed in the introduction.

I tried this adventure in my never-ending quest to get through all of the "contest" adventures. (The contest CALL A.P.P.L.E. held last spring – summer.) It is only the 4th of these 13 adventures that I have tried but I would have to rate it about second of these four. I believe it is better than The Feast of Carroll (the winner of the contest!).

The room descriptions were fairly good, although there were some ambiguities and I found myself trying to do impossible things to interact with my surroundings. It is not a version 6.0 adventure, of course, so this was not really necessary. The descriptions of the monsters were not bad, although none were dramatic and many were so similar that they must have been related.

The worse thing about this adventure is that action-wise it was somewhat boring. There were very few monsters, and lots of empty rooms. (Although I don’t expect every room to have something in it, this one went too far.)

Description: You find yourself outside a very bizarre temple. For reasons that you don't really understand, you go inside and take part in a weird ritual. Drugs that you ingest during that ritual have an very odd effect on you...when you come to yourself, you find that you are one inch tall and in a friend's yard!

And so you embark on a quest to discover how to make yourself normal again.

Comment: This adventure does a pretty good job of portraying the experience of being so very small. You start out in a "forest" of lawn grass, and fight your way past an assortment of insects. There is an interesting side-trip into an anthill. Though most of your opponents are small like you, you will have to find a way past a cat which thinks that you are dinner.

The introduction is very unusual. It actually consists of a mini-adventure with its own commands and events and its own small map. It somewhat gives the player a feeling of having gotten himself into this mess (although in actual truth he has no choice).

All in all, I enjoyed the play. It mapped well and was very consistent. It had two or three nicely done puzzles. It would have rated better but for two things: first, drug use is an integral part of the adventure both going in and during play, and the solution consists of trying drugs until you find one that makes you big again. Secondly, there is a large number of death traps. While there certainly are warning clues for all these traps, there are so many that stumbling into one or two is virtually unavoidable. The cat, for instance, is instant death if you don't do the right thing on the very first move.

The combination of puzzle difficulty and death traps gives this adventure a (7) rating for difficulty. Puzzle fanciers will probably enjoy it more than Hack'n'Slashers, but there is plenty of combat to go around.

Description: "As you step out of the Hall, a hansom cab pulls up. Soon after you are seated in the cab, you fall into a deep slumber. You awaken, in a strange room alone."

Comment: This is a somewhat strange Eamon. While I haven't read the poem personally, it appears to be based on "Jabberwocky". It has a lot of odd creatures. The map itself is rather mundane, although the room connections are often pretty mixed up and one-way, and exits are seldom named. About half of the map is simple in-one-side-and-out-the other rooms, and the rest almost constitutes an intermittent maze.

Your "quest" is to find an exit. I would guess that you probably won't see more than about 30 of the 50 rooms on a given playthrough. With a difficulty rating of (4), it is actually an easy play, although it may not be suitable for young Eamonauts because of the room connections.

Description: In the distance you see a huge obelisk which the Night Marshall says is 'the Pillar of Time'. "Many people," he says, "have come this route never to return. Good Luck." Slowly, he turns and leaves.

Turning towards the east, walking, you soon find yourself before a huge fifty meter obelisk. As you draw close to it you see an inscription.

HAIL ALL THOSE WHO COME THIS WAY. WOE BE THOSE WHO SPEAK THE ANCIENT WORDS AND DESECRATE THIS MOST HONORED SHRINE. LO THE PROPHET OF TIME, JOHN COOPER, HAS SPOKEN!!!

Casually you turn to leave even as you hear a voice say "Cooper's Revenge is upon you...foolish mortal!!!"

Comment: There is some more to the introduction, but it has very little to do with the play. Basically, you find yourself in a rather odd city with overhead railroads, magical mists, and lots of cryptically inscribed obelisks. The basic thrust of this adventure is to explore the city and find a way back to the Main Hall.

The city is loaded with fascinating objects and clues and seems to promise a lot a interesting puzzles and special effects. Every few rooms you run across yet another inscribed obelisk with passages like this one: "THAT WHICH IS SEALED IN CRYSTAL CONTAINS THE POWER TO RELEASE THE FROZEN." Unfortunately, nearly all of it is fluff-- "color" and "atmosphere" pieces that actually have nothing to do with solving the adventure. At least, if more puzzles existed, I couldn't find them and didn't need them for anything. There is no indication of success or failure at the end of the game, so I conclude that the only true objective is escape.

Even so, the atmosphere is well done and interesting to read. It fails on two counts: first, it has dozens and dozens of stupid spelling errors. The extra command ALTAR, for example, is really "alter". The second, and in my opinion much more damaging failing is that it has about a half-dozen death traps.

I give it a difficulty rating of (6). While there is very little that is actually challenging, the map is pretty complex and the death traps do offer minimal warning once you have fallen into one and know what they are. I feel that it is worth playing for the interesting descriptions and map, but there is little combat and only one puzzle.

With no mission previously defined, I started in a U.S. army barracks in Vietnam. Venturing out into the jungles and villages of Vietnam, I found many peasants (Peasant 1, Peasant2, etc.) and "Gooks" (Gook1, Gook2, etc.). The monster names and descriptions were of such a monotone flavor that I became bored and just started killing everybody, whether they were friend or not. This wasn’t too difficult to accomplish since I had a rocket launcher with a seemingly endless supply of rockets. No monster (including tanks and planes) withstood one attack from me. Realistic, maybe. Fun, no.

The mission, I later realized, was to get out of the army. I was not pleased with the way I had to do this. I believe an alternative method should have been provided; especially since the character I used does not condone the use of perception altering substances (drugs). Perhaps Mr. Allen was making a social comment with his adventure – but looking through his other adventures (The Sewers of Chicago, Master’s Dungeon and Lost Adventure) I rather doubt it.

In summary, this is a great text adventure for people who don’t like to read, like the adventure to do their thinking for them and are entranced with killing things in one blow.

Personally, I would not recommend this adventure to anyone, especially children.

Description: The Chicago Health Board has determined that the numbers of rats in Chicago are so high that if nothing is done, it would be necessary to evacuate the city. To combat this menace, they have offered a 20 gold piece reward for every rat brought to the Bounty Office. Good Luck!

Comment: This adventure has a neat catchy name, but is a poor game, leading to quite a disappointment for those who bought it for its name. The above description is the actual description, more or less, which should give you some idea about the depth of the adventure. The only plot is to kill rats and take them to the Bounty Office at the end of the game. Even if you are a Hack'n'Slasher like myself, you will find it dull, as the rats are wimps.

An important aspect of this adventure is that the author went out of his way to put in 'Gotcha!' death traps. These include unlabeled poisons, nuclear materials in stupid places, and fixing the POWER spell so that it only does harm. The only saving point is that this adventure was one of the first to list exits in the room names.

This adventure is one of my least favorite, and I would recommend it only to people who have everything else.

Description: "As you leave the Main Hall a dark Dwarf sidles up to you. He says, 'Would you like to visit a kingdom in the clouds?'"

Comment: This begins as a standard "Kill'n'Loot" scenario, but after a while I found myself more interested in finding an exit than anything else. The map is rather messy with lots of very similar room names, though you can't call it a maze, because the room descriptions are quite different. However, the room names don't even remotely resemble the descriptions, which makes mapping a difficult chore.

Much of the stuff was interesting and clever, but mapping got to be a real grind, greatly lowering my overall enjoyment, and a no-warning death trap didn't help. The exit is not marked either, which means that the game is over once you stumble through it, which can happen in 8 or 9 moves if you make all the right choices. There are no puzzles, and the bad guys aren't too bad, but the map bumps the difficulty up to a (6).

Hint: there are secret doors which LOOK will not find. There are hints, but to be safe you might want to just try all directions in every room.

Description: "You have been chosen to journey into the Caverns of Doom to recover the stolen machinery desperately needed by the Apple Computer Corporation for their new computer, the Apple IIe.

"The town will reward you for each piece of machinery returned. In addition, Hokas Tokas says that he will reward you himself."

Comment: This Eamon starts with much promise, but it is not well turned out and shows a severe lack of final polishing. There are tons of text errors of just about every kind. The room exits are usually well enough marked on this 100-room map, but there are several significant room connection errors.

There is no theme to the adventure. You'll see Egyptian pharaohs, mad scientists, dinosaurs, demons, Superman, evil priests, and more. That probably lowered my rating as much as anything. There are several death traps. The artifacts are apparently quite heavy; I was unable to carry more than a handful at any time.

This is not an easy Eamon. Between the mapping problems and some tough bad guys, a difficulty rating of (8) is none too high. But there's more. I could find no way to exit the dungeon after having completed the Quest! Spelunking the MAIN PGM with Program Writer revealed that the UNLOCK command does nothing except set a variable that is not used anywhere else. I can only conclude that this is yet another bit that didn't quite get that final polish.

Hint: when carrying the sword TELON, you will be randomly teleported every 15-20 moves. There is no text or message, it just happens. It looks like a bug, but it's that way on purpose.

Description: "One day, you meet a tall man. He says that he is Lord Hobart, rightful owner of the castle Valkenburg before the evil sorceror Draxnehr conquered it. The castle holds many monsters that have occupied the castle from the start to the last years. I am too old to fight to get it back. I will pay you to defeat the evil lich that lurks in Valkenburg castle, and rid the castle of its monsters"

Comment: This Eamon has a number of problems: First, the room descriptions use very confusing wording, making it very difficult to figure out where the named exits are. All of the descriptions begin with the article "A", which spoils the narrative. There are a staggering number of spelling errors. And there are about a half-dozen death traps, though you'll probably only be killed once before you learn to recognize them. I give it a (6) for difficulty.

Description: Welcome to Modern Problems! You have been transported to Seattle circa 1983. There are two ways in which you may win the game: 1) buy a bus ticket to the Main Hall; 2) win the game. The bus ticket costs 200 GP, and is the easy exit.

To win the game, you must: 1) get a job; 2) get a car; 3) get an apartment. Your armor and weapons will be saved for later, and you will be given a .357 Magnum and a bullet-proof vest.

Comment: This adventure is refreshing in that its quest is not related to violence or fighting. Don't take me wrong- there is a good deal of fighting, but it's not too significant.

The worst feature about this adventure is that it can get rather unrealistic, allowing you into all kinds of places that nobody would let you go in real life. For example, you can walk right into a mental hospital and get wasted.

A nice feature is that in order to make a transaction, you must say something to the clerks, or else they will ignore you. (But that's unrealistic, too- they always ignore you in real life!)

This game is rather fun, but has the simple style that you expect of an earlier Eamon.

Description: When leaving the Main Hall, you bump into the Duke. He asks you if you would do him a favor. Being no coward, you agree. He tells you that a party of bandits broke into his castle last night and stole several treasures. Luckily, the guard caught all but the leader, and recovered most of the treasure. The leader, a thief named Karal, took 5 family treasures and hid in the ruins of some terrible place on another level of reality.

A wizard enters, chants a few words, and there's a flash.

Comment: This adventure is probably one of the best you will find that has almost no modification to the MAIN PGM. The only modification that I found was a sequence that required you to have the 5 treasures to exit.

The text is well written and entertaining, often humorous. I myself found it entertaining because of its resemblance to the school I attend.

It is mainly a Hack 'n Slash joke-fest, with almost no puzzle solving. I don't really mind this, but fans of puzzle-rich Eamons will be disappointed.

Description: "An evil man is building up an army and is planning to take over the Main Hall. I was once a prisoner in his concentration camp. I escaped and came to the Main Hall to warn a brave and loyal Free Adventurer like you. You must stop this evil man. His name is Xenor. The way to find him is that you must venture into the DUNGEONS OF XENON.

"The dungeon leads to his hide-out. You go past the dungeon and through the forest of Eldar. Along the way you will meet five friends. Now remember, you must kill Xenor. The Main Hall is at stake and we're all depending on you."

Comment: Well, I saw no army, so you don't have to worry about fighting one. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this is supposed to be named "Dungeons of Xenor", but there you are.

This Eamon will be of interest primarily to the young Hack'n'Slash crowd. It has one death trap, a couple of unimportant signs to be read, no artifacts other than weapons and treasure, and "lots• of bad guys.

This feels mostly like a largish Beginners Cave, with a bit of humor and a mixed bag of monsters. Being a very early-version MAIN PGM, it requires that the full command be typed, but I did not find that to be a big deal, given its simple nature and the repetitive nature of combat (type command, hit return, hit return, hit return...)

The map is not bad at all, nicely laid out and written, though the room descriptions were often very simple. There appears to be a couple of bad room connections near the end, but it felt intentional to me, to fake a simple maze.

It gets a (4) for difficulty, and it is that high only because there is no SAVE command. This is definitely a good pick for the Young Eamonaut.

Description: 'One day, you see Hokas Tokas, the wizard. He says to you, "I have just heard word of a new tyrant. He has the ancient Medallion of the Mind. It was stolen from King Eamon's treasure room. It has the power of controlling other people's minds. I found the tyrant's hide-out. It is in the CHAOSIUM CAVES. You must venture into the caves and kill the tyrant. His name is Astrallion. To get out of the cave, get the Medallion." He makes a gesture with his hand and you find yourself in the caves.'

Comment: The above is the entire text of the introduction. Although you are given a quest, the background is rather bare. And so goes the adventure. There are no puzzles nor hidden stuff. The extra commands are nothing special. The descriptions are typically no more than a variation on the name (eg: YOU ARE IN A N/S HALL). Four-fifths of the monsters are bats and skeletons (BAT4, BAT7, SKELETON11, etc.). Punctuation is very erratic.

It has two things going for it: there is a quest, and the room exits are clearly stated in both the room descriptions and in the names. It is a VERY simple adventure, and may be well-suited for young Eamonauts. I give it a (2) for difficulty.

Description: "The Wizard Frobos has commissioned you to secure a dragontooth from the lair of the White Dragon beneath the smith's stronghold."

Comment: Here we have a pretty straightforward Hack'n'Slash Eamon, with a large map and well-written room descriptions. The play is to check out a smithy and the passages hidden below it. LOOK appears to do nothing special at all; there are many secret passages, but you can only find them by simply trying every direction in every room. There is one "Gotcha!" no-warning death trap. The monsters and weapons are somewhat boring, with names like DWARF10 and VIPER7.

No mental heavy lifting at all. Just check out all the passages and kill all the bad guys. I half-expected to get slammed by the dragon once I got the tooth, but all I saw was one quick glimpse of him and then he was gone. Difficulty rings in at (5).

Description: The revered hero Gladmar has gone insane. The powerful wizard Dracnard has determined that Gladmar is possessed by the demon Demogorgon. The only way to cure him is to recover a magical golden statue of the demon which was last possessed by the evil Lord Rovnart of Nagog hundreds of years ago. His stronghold, the Black Castle of Nagog, was conquered over 200 years ago and has been abandoned ever since because of its evil reputation.

Comment: The adventure is well-written with a clear quest, and was very enjoyable to solve and to play. This is not a simple rehash of old ideas, but presents some fresh puzzles and concepts. I had fun. The level of the dungeon is geared towards a 'standard' character with ordinary, mundane weapons. If you get a lot out of combat in Eamon, then arm yourself with a simple sword from the Main Hall's armorer for this foray. Using a 2D10 sword, I killed many with one blow.

The puzzles are well done, quite adequately clued, and not difficult to solve, with the following exception: LOOK doesn't find secret passages or hidden clues; that is the function of the SEARCH command. In order to find secret passages, you must SEARCH WALLS. There are several clues similar to version 6 embedded artifacts that can only be found by using SEARCH. It works well enough, but the method is poorly explained.

Because of the weak monsters (even Demogorgon!) and the complete puzzle clues, I give it a (5) for difficulty. There is a reward for a successful quest and an amusing penalty for failure. Doug produced a good adventure; it's too bad that this is the only one that he did.

Description: The dreaded Cthulhu Cycle has existed since the dawn of time. The ancient myths of the Elder Beings from beyond space and time have, in other worlds, too often proved true. You hear a rumor of the Tomb of Y'Golonac, filled with hideous monsters from a bygone era. It must be looted and the god destroyed. You read a rotting, worm-eaten tome...

'Beyond a gulf in the subterranean night a passage leads to a wall of massive brick, and beyond the wall rises Y'Golonac to be served by the tattered eyeless figures of the dark. So may Y'Golonac return to walk among men and await the time when Earth is cleared and Cthulhu rises from his tomb among the weeds, Glaaki thrusts open the crystal trapdoor, Snub-Niggurath strides forth to smash the moon-lens...'

That night you set off to find the Tomb. After heading over a small, forgotten path winding through the huge Voormithadreth mountains, you came across the entrance to the Tomb!

Comment: This adventure was dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft who originated the literary tradition which has come to be known as the Cthulhu Mythos. If you are familiar with these stories by Lovecraft, et al., you will appreciate this adventure more. If you have played the Call of Cthulhu game (( C ) by Chaosium, Inc.) you wil have a good idea of what to expect from this adventure - you will probably die. If youare a wimp, the monsters will kill you. If you're really tough, and you don't fumble your heavy-duty weapon (killing yourself,) then you may survive. But if you are thorough in your explorations, then you will die in one of the traps. The best way to deal with this is to heed any warning that the author provides during play. This limits your exploration but gives you the best chance of surviving.

My biggest gripe about this adventure is the large number of unmarked exits from rooms. The LOOK command does not find these exits. The player is reduced to trying every direction in every room. This wastes a lot of time and quickly becomes a pain in the neck. I would normally complain about the 'gotcha' traps but these are true to the genre. In the Cthulhu Mythos, the humans who confronted the Elder Gods typically died, usually horribly. That's why if you are a shade Cthulhoid yourself, you may appreciate the numerous opportunities to croak. There are few mistakes and typos, and the descriptions are sufficiently gruesome to raise the adventure's rating. I would recommend it to any Cthulhu nuts, but there are better adventures for normal Eamon players. If you have played all of the better ones and are still after a challenge, then you might consider this one.

"You are in a charming double bedroom in modern Miami style, with dark green walls and a polished oak floor." Room after room, they’re all the same. Another description the author painstakingly mulled over to set the proper mood, "Too normal to bother describing." The writer, obviously short on ideas after the first room or two, persevered to create 100 rooms of boredom (quantity vs. quality). One actual warning sums up this ‘adventure’: "Don’t waste your time, just leave".

Description: "While sailing the Great Lake Eamon you are caught in a dense fog. After several hours of aimless wandering you land upon an island in a strange land."

Comment: The above is a brief summary of the actual into text. The variation in playing time stems from the fact that I played it on the ApplePC emulator at a very fast speed. This is an old Eamon with no speed-ups and would run slower on an actual Apple II. I felt that this adventure deserved a modern review after reading Bob Davis' harsh review and rating. Don't get me wrong, this is by no means a masterpiece, but I found it to be amusing and pretty well written. Other than some obvious typos, I found few spelling or grammar errors.

The map is large (100 rooms) but laid out so simple that mapping is unnecessary. The descriptions are interesting and pretty funny at times. The theme is based on the "James Bond" adventure series and it features several classic Bond villains as well as 007 himself.

Where it really falls down is its lack of special events. The ONLY modification to the standard v4 MAIN PGM is a REM statement dedicating it to Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond). My theory is that the author, while having some decent writing skills, knew little or nothing about Applesoft programming. Still, the story moves along remarkably well through the use of some one-way passages and doesn't stray from the theme at all.

This is a version 4, so you have to type complete names and commands for everything. There is one empty secret room that can only be found by moving in an unlisted direction and a deathtrap room that has been permanently sealed off (I'm assuming the author didn't know how to implement it). One of the monster descriptions has been accidentally wiped out with a carriage return. The text is still intact on the disk and I fixed my copy using the Copy II Plus sector editor. (Track $10, Sector $03 change: A2 8D A2 to A2 D9 CF)

One final warning. Some of the descriptions use stormy language and/or adult suggestions. This isn't inappropriate if you consider the theme it is based upon. I didn't find anything obscene or profane in what I saw, just some stuff in the PG-13 area.

Description: "Hearing tales of great adventure in a place called Eamon Bluff you set off to find this ancient place.

"You come upon two paths thick in fog. One leads past an old cemetery and past a well. The other path goes deeper into the fog, and a deathly silence overtakes you."

Comment: This Eamon has much of the vivid imagery that Tim does so well. He's quite good at generating atmosphere. But, unfortunately, this Eamon was released before it was completed. I recently talked with Tim, and he said that it was never finished because he had lost access to an Apple computer at the time.

But even apart from that, this is an uncommonly difficult Eamon. There are several death traps, some without warning. There is a nasty gimmick that turns all of your companions against you without warning. The bad guys are absurdly strong; many had hardiness ratings in the 200-300 range. One had a hardiness of 910!

The map is a bit of a mess, with several mismarked exits, and I wound up trying every direction in every room to ensure that I didn't miss anything because of incorrect exit descriptions.

This is an older Eamon, and it requires the typing of full commands with no abbreviations. This isn't normally all that bad, but there are several name misspellings that drove me nuts because I kept typing them correctly.

In the end, I had to throw in the towel. By the time I had exhausted my leads and my ideas I had still not seen 19 of the 100 rooms and could not get past several "force walls". And it didn't help any that the program crashed 5 or 6 times with OUT OF MEMORY stack overflows during play (but the simple POKE51,0:GOTO100 restart command got me going again every time). I was left with the strong impression that this Eamon does deserve its (10) difficulty rating.

Here are a few hints that I gathered:

Take the cemetery route. Don't go down the well until you can find nothing else to do. You'll take a life-threatening hit every time you enter the anteroom off the front door.

It's too bad that this Eamon wasn't finished. It's got a lot of Good Stuff in it. But it's just too hard.

While walking along a plateau, you meet a man who professes to help you find your way and then promptly pushes you off a cliff into a deep canyon. Luckily, a magic spell saves you from being crushed on the hard, rocky ground below. After determining your physical state, you find yourself in a hot, dry environment with no idea how to get out of the deep canyon.

A basic escape adventure, the Deep Canyon is excellent for beginning and/or young adventurers with a small puzzle to solve before being able to leave. The descriptions are good, with some interesting effects and the designer did keep with the theme throughout the entire scenario.

I found the adventure to be easily survived using test character ALDO CELLA – hardiness 15, chain armor and 55% sword ability – so go ahead and put any character through this adventure with little fear of losing him/her.

I think one hint is deserved here; the secret passages cannot be detected by the LOOK command, so the adventurer must stumble upon them. But after all, what’s a secret passage if it isn’t secret?

Another dull boring night at the Main Hall. Being a bit irritable from inactivity and a quarrel with your lover, you decide to overindulge in Hyperborean mead and insult Hokas Tokas, the resident wizard. Bad move. Hokas says, "Only my sense of honor and discipline prevent me from striking you dead where you stand! Instead, I will send you on a quest to the land of Dharma. Perhaps you will learn to help others and not think only of yourself. Perhaps you may even find and conquer the warrior within." With that, he waves his hand and you find yourself in an unfamiliar land.

Roger says there are two missions in this adventure, one within the other. Actually I feel there are three LEVELS of missions: one to help others, another explained in the adventure and the third in the temples of the Greek Gods. I played this adventure approximately 6 times and it continued to hold my interest. ( I would have played it more, but I had to stop and write this review.) Some parts of the dungeon are not always accessible each time it is played and special effects abound.

Minor points like exits not described in the short room descriptions and spacing problems of descriptions are easily overlooked when considering the entire scope of the adventure. (I did have a little trouble on how to use the rings at first, but that may have just been me.) Overall – Good job, Roger!

Description: "At the Temple, you can get as involved or as uninvolved as you please in a variety of attractions. You may leave the Temple with permanently elevated hardiness, agility, or charisma, for example. Perhaps you will choose a new name. There are opportunities to win gold, and several ways to spend or lose it. There are also a few ways to get killed."

Comment: The description pretty well sums it up. This is a formalized "Monty Haul" adventure where you can easily bump up your stats or your cash in a way that is more "honest" than using the character editor. There are four parts:

Bureau of Names: here you can change your name or the name of a weapon.

Sheepskinner Casino: you can play roulette or bet on wrestling matches. (You'll make a lot more money if you bet negative amounts of cash.)

Gladiator's Pool: fight robots in an arena for pay. The pay varies from 75GP to 10,000GP, but I found them all easy to kill.

Adventurer's Proving Grounds: an easy 18-room dungeon where you can win an extra point for your hardiness, agility, or charisma for a fee.

The concept is unique, but I confess that I was not quite bored as I worked my way though the place. Bob Davis gave it a (5) for difficulty, but this seems exceedingly high to me. I think that the difficulty is something closer to (3).

I believe the author does an excellent job of describing this adventure; so as not to do him or his adventure any injustice, here’s Don…

You were drinking too much. You know that now. If you hadn’t been drinking too much, you wouldn’t have made that foolish bet. Now it’s too late.

The fellow looked so young, so inexperienced. He looked drunk, too. So when he bet you 500 gold pieces that he had a magic spell you couldn’t get yourself out of, you naturally assumed he was bluffing.

He wasn’t bluffing and he wasn’t drunk. You have awakened in an underground labyrinth. You feel tired and drawn. It’s more than a hangover, though you certainly have one of those. No, it’s as if a part of yourself were missing.

A part of yourself IS missing!

You have been split into two selves, and what is worse your other self is somewhere else in this maze. You cannot survive outside this magical maze unless you merge back with your other self.

The barroom prankster was not completely merciless, however. You find that by exerting a little concentrated thought, you can transport your mind to your other self. (Type ‘SWITCH’ whenever you want to do this.) Unfortunately, if one self gets wounded, the other is injured simultaneously.

Remember, you must not try to leave the dungeon unless you have merged with your other self.

Bob again. Two big pluses this adventure has is 1) A very original idea and 2) the most complex maze in Eamon. It is very survivable (if you’re careful), the room descriptions are generic (helping to make the maze confusing), the monsters and artifacts are interesting, and the theme is refreshing, warranting special consideration.

This is not your typical "kill everybody and get everything you can get" adventure. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. It’s to the players advantage to find non-violent solutions to the finer points. Temple of the Trolls strikes the delicate balance between having enough brawn to get in, yet brains to get out.

Rough notes on a dying man’s map start you on your quest for Grommick, a Trollish Blacksmith and mighty weapon-maker without human peer who possesses the skill to forge a magic sword. Legends maintain that a stout warrior with a fearless heart and a matchless arm can attain such a weapon.

Written one Sunday afternoon, John Nelson utilized the DDD 6.0 and created a genre of Eamon guaranteed to take a month of Sundays to crack, it you don’t know what you’re doing. If you like snooping into every nook and cranny, this it the one you’ve been waiting for.

Description: "Baron Hador, being the kind soul he is, took in a man who had collapsed in front of his castle. The next morning he man was gone, and a search showed that gone too were certain private papers, the Baron's crest, and Tanya his daughter!

"The Baron has asked you to recover the stolen items and rescue his young daughter. Knowing a little bit of magic, he will teleport you inside the castle where you can search.

"He told you, "I will be able to arrange a distraction that will keep the Count out of his castle for an hour and a half. You'll be doomed if you are there when he returns. Therefore, I will teleport you back when the time is up."

Comment: This is one of Brown's best Eamons. It is not a complex play, but is simple like most early Eamons were. But the time gimmick greatly heightens the tension. Every move gives you the time elapsed, and I found myself trying to plan how to shave seconds and minutes from my search.

The timings are nicely done. You get a readout to the second, and the timings seem reasonable for the moves made, except for movement. Each room move consumes an entire minute, the time required for most people to walk a city block! You are not penalized for typos.

You are scored at the end of play. You get points for each GP of loot, plus bonus points for the three things you were tasked to recover.

The "90 minutes" of play generally took me about a half-hour. I was not successful in rescuing Tanya on my first attempt, but just made it in my second (the map is a set piece and does not vary from play to play). She is hidden magically and was difficult to find. This plus the time limit puts the difficulty at about (7).

Two hints: EXAMINE is an important command. And be sure to watch for unusual characteristics in the descriptions.

Description: You have been selected by the king to rescue several high officials who were kidnapped last week. The king's warlock has devised a plan that should make your job fairly easy. However, for it to succeed, you must first possess the fabled Key of Molinar. The key is a magical teleportation device.

No one knows where the key currently lies. The warlock has a spell that will teleport you to the Key's vicinity. You are advised to get the key as soon as possible, and use it to return.

Comment: This Eamon is the first part of a two-part adventure. Eamon #81 is Part Two. This was the very first two-disk Eamon, and the NEUC mistakenly assigned a number to each disk. This was also originally something called a "Tournament Eamon". I have never seen the Tournament version and don't know what was involved. I assume that it incorporated some kind of scoring system for competitive play. John Nelson converted it to a normal Eamon back in 1984.

This can be played without Eamon #81, but you cannot return to the Main Hall at the end, since it exits to #81 only. I don't recommend playing this Eamon without #81.

This is one of the shortest, easiest Eamons in the list, with 26 Rooms and 7 Monsters. There are no puzzles or hidden passages. Just run through the rooms, find the Key, and teleport out. I give it a Difficulty rating of (2).

Description: "You are now ready to rescue the kidnapped officials. Again, the warlock does not know where they are, but he can and will teleport you there.

"You will be carrying a lantern and the Key of Molinar, in addition to your weapons. You can teleport yourself or a friendly person home by saying their name."

Comment: This Eamon is Part Two of a two-part adventure. Eamon #80 is Part One. It would be very nice if we could reassign these two Eamons to a single number, but they have been listed separately for 10 years now.

The proper way to play this Eamon is by entering it from Eamon #80, but it was modified in 1989 so it can be played from the Main Hall also.

The 53-Room map is a simple collection of uninteresting corridors and cells, and the bad guys nearly all have names like GOON19. There is a large group of people to rescue who are spread all through the map. You will enjoy the play the most if you try to envision the original "tournament" objectives and try to rescue as many as you can, as quickly as you can. I also recommend playing the two Eamons in one sitting, as originally intended.

Except for killing umpteen goons, there isn't a lot to do or solve here, so it gets a difficulty rating of (4) from me. One hint: there's no need to wait to teleport the prisoners home.

Description: "There is trouble in the town of Yomber! The queen's dog, Fifi, has been dognapped and there is a reward for the person who finds her. Fifi has been stolen by a group of vicious goblins known only as the Rogues of R.T. Yomber will never be safe until this R.T. is stopped.

"You will be issued a special ring. This extraordinary ring has many powers, the most powerful being on your death, you will be teleported to Yomber castle, alive.

"You have approximately three hours to complete the mission. If not back within that time, the ring will teleport you to Yomber castle."

Comment: This adventure is very similar to Eamon #79 in that you have a limited number of moves and are scored at the end. It plays well enough, and is not especially complex or difficult to complete. I was able to rescue Fifi in my first attempt, though time was getting short.

I got somewhat bored while exploring a large forest and while floundering about on the ocean in a boat. I have no doubt that these mapping aspects were included so as to run up the game clock as the player frantically explored them. This works as a random element of play, which never thrills me. Apart from that, the play is a set piece, as in "Count Fuey".

In the end you are scored on loot taken, goblins killed, Fifi rescued, R.T. killed, and the state of your health. I peg the difficulty at (5).

Three hints: remember the GO command and your spells, and don't put to sea without provisions.

Description: "King Escher calls you before his throne and asks you to take on an assignment of incredible importance. The magic orb, Ballweena, has been stolen by Vathek, the king of a neighboring realm. The orb supplies the psychic power that keeps the whole kingdom going. The orb can be recognized by its blue glow.

"It is your job to find the orb and return it to the king. Escher says that he will have his favorite psychic waiting outside the castle walls to accompany you."

Comment: This was Jim's first Eamon, and it is a very creditable job. The largish map is a bit simple, but clear. He's done some nice coding of special events. He did a very nice job with his method of printing a single description for a band of several bad guys in this time before the advent of the multiple-monster.

This is an early version of the 6.0 MAIN PGM. You have to type full command verbs, and LOOK doesn't recognize anything but full names. However, the other commands all seem to accept truncated names without problem. When playing, you'll want to stay aware of the full-name limitation of LOOK, otherwise you won't be able to find an embedded artifact that you need.

One item I really liked was the comments that the psychic guide made as I progressed. You'll want to pay close attention to his advice.

While nicely written, this Eamon doesn't have a lot of depth, which lowered my rating slightly and gives it a difficulty rating of (4).

Description: "A man tells you of a castle to the north of town which was abandoned by the royal government when the queen mysteriously died in her bedroom. The man gives you a map to the Castle, and quickly leaves. You study the map for a while and decide to adventure in the castle."

Comment: This was a fairly average adventure, being neither outstanding nor a stinker. It is strictly a 'kill and loot' scenario, and the only puzzles are secret passages and an unusual 'elevator' gimmick. I detected a hint of a quest for vengeance against the queen's murderer but it wasn't followed through with. It has 80 rooms and the map had lots of diversity with no problems, although there was never a real castle with such a weird layout. I found a few minor faults. The 60-odd monsters had dead body artifacts, and they all said YOU SEE THE DEAD BODY OF THE (monster). It got boring to fight and kill them with such mundane death scenes to read. Another fault is that many of the monsters are wild animals that have no business in an abandoned castle. The most notable such encounter was with an angry giraffe in an underground tunnel! Last, there were valuables laying about to be looted in dumb places; for example, a "priceless" Ming vase in a cistern room.

But it was otherwise well built and error free. Hack- &-Slashers should note that it is geared for weapons from Marcos' weapon shop and is a pushover with magic-class weapons. But with a mundane weapon in the 1D8 class, this adventure would be an interesting challenge.

I didn’t quite understand the point to this adventure. It said I was going to check out a science exhibit at the Eamon Hall of Science. The exhibit turned out to be a time portal.

One interesting thing about this adventure was there were multiple settings. One could pass from one setting in time to another by passing through the portal of his choice. Telling too much here may spoil the suspense, so I won’t elaborate.

The adventure was paced a little slow for my taste, but was still adequate to keep my interest. It seemed a little small after I had it thoroughly explored.

Once nice thing about this adventure is it wasn’t too difficult in either problem solving or survivability (as long as you picky our enemies carefully.)

Description: "I've heard from a few of the boys that you're looking for something to do to 'pass the time'. Well I've got something you just might be interested in, old buddy!

"I've heard that the boys down at the Science Institute have made a fantastic discovery. They've come up with a wonderful new time machine!!! This machine is supposed to be able to take you to places you never dreamed were possible."

Comment: This Eamon is actually a conglomeration of three small Eamon dungeons linked together through the "time portals". The three themes are movie monsters, movie cavemen, and Star Trek.

Each of them was smallish, of course, with very similar-feeling, unimaginative maps. There were a few specials that upped the rating somewhat, though. The CLOSE and DRINK commands are pretty useless, so don't expect too much from them.

I guess it gets a (5) for difficulty, too. Be sure to read the descriptions carefully, as each place has a death trap that is described before you get nailed by it.

Description: You are summoned before King Stevron. He wishes you to go to Castle Mantru, where the evil wizard called Crimson has hidden the magical Amulet of Wizdom, which was stolen from the king. If Crimson has the amulet long enough, he will be able to use its powers to control the world.

It is rumored that the amulet is also where you will find Crimson deep in his castle. It is also rumored that Crimson has many deadly monsters and traps in his castle.

King Stevron says that he will reward you well if the amulet is brought back and is not damaged. Any special weapons that you find are yours to keep. You will probably have to kill Crimson to get out safely.

Comment: This adventure isn't terribly sophisticated. It plays much like an earlier version of Eamon, with no hidden artifacts or locked doors to contend with, but it has the convenience of the shortened commands that version 6 allows. The descriptions and monsters are on this same level: short and simple but not exactly lyrical in their content. The 76-room map is laid out well enough, and the room names and descriptions list available exits, a definite plus.

So while there is little of special note to make this adventure stand out, it is a competently done Sword & Sorcery dungeon and well worth a play. The Hi-Res screen at the end of the intro is a nicely done line drawing of the Castle that was a very nice touch. As puzzles are nonexistent and the monsters are suitable for mundane weapons, I give this adventure a (3) for difficulty. All in all, a superior beginner-level Eamon adventure.

Description: You were searching for a new adventure in the hills of Mansui when you stumbled upon a small cave that you remembered from tales told at the Main Hall. It leads into Hollow Mountain, and is fabled to have great treasure, if you can get out with it.

Comment: This adventure would at first glance seem quite dull, as it has no quest and the exit is plainly marked at the beginning, but it is one of the funniest that I have ever played. The monsters quite often have rather silly names like Froggy, Horation of Pi, or Jeff Harris (Ed. note- I wonder what Jeff would think about this opinion!), and some actions have very amusing results.

People of both the Hack'n'Slash and Problem-Solving genres will be moderately pleased with this adventure, as there is a good deal of both. Its only drawback is the lack of a quest.

I would recommend it to everyone, especially people with a less than serious nature.

Description: "By the whim of whatever gods or spirits control your destiny, you have been chosen to enter... THE SHOPPING MALL"

Comment: Here we have a leisurely stroll through a shopping mall. I'd bet that it reflects a real mall somewhere, and that the store clerks are real people. As for content, we've got 17 store clerks and ONE artifact. No one to fight, no puzzles to solve, nothing to find. There is one rather bizarre side path to a little cabin with an underground tunnel that contains nothing but seemed to spring from the author's childhood memories.

Strangely enough, it's very well written. But it's pointless and BORING. Difficulty of (1).

Description: "You are now in Japan. A tyrant, Lin Wang, recently seized power there, by force. He built a huge fortress, so that no one could harm him. You must avoid his karate experts (ranging from white to black belt), his Samurai and Ninja guards, captains, and generals, and you must avoid his Oriental and Komodo dragons. Finally, you must kill Lin Wang and escape his fortress.

Comment: This is straight Hack'n'slash fare. No puzzles, no secret passages, just lots and lots of combat.

I confess that I was put off from the beginning by Sam's use of a Chinese name for a Japanese bad guy, and it didn't help that the punctuation is all over the map. Also, every one of the dead bodies had the same spacing error.

It's an OK Eamon, but not a great one. Once you've killed one Ninja, you killed them all, so to speak. Sam added some bits to his narrative, such as gratuitously calling me a coward in the middle of an empty passage, that didn't set well with me, either.

There is a lot of combat here, so you may want to bring along a good set of magic weapons. Given a good magic sword, I peg the difficulty at (6).

Description: You have been assigned to the embassy in Moscow, officially as an Air Force attache. Actually, however, you are a highly-trained member of a covert branch of the CIA known as SOG, or Special Operations Group. SOG was famous during the Vietnam War for its covert operations behind the lines in North Vietnam, including assassinations.

One night you are called to duty by your section chief, who looks like he is about to have apoplexy. He informs you that our agents have discovered an unbelievable but terrible plot -- the Libyans have succeeded in putting an atomic bomb somewhere in the Kremlin and the thing is set to go off in a few hours! If the bomb explodes, the Soviets will think the Americans did it and launch their missiles, starting World War III!

It is your task to go into the Kremlin and find the bomb and dismantle it. Your adrenaline starts pumping! This is the one you have been waiting for -- the assignment that will let you use all your training and skill, and save the world besides!

Comment: This adventure does a nice job of conveying the tension of the situation. Every move that you make takes one minute, and the bomb goes off after two hours! Each round prints an inverse bar with the remaining minutes on it. It can really get on your nerves, which is a nice approximation of how you would feel if the situation was real.

The maps and descriptions of the Kremlin grounds give a pretty good feel for how it is laid out and what it must be like. Descriptions and room names give available exits, an very important feature in Eamons with a time limit. Good use was made of version 6 stuff, with notes, containers, and other features in ready abundance. Jim supplies you with a full arsenal of modern weapons and special equipment for the task at hand. All in all, a well-turned-out adventure.

Ok, if it's so good, how come I didn't give it a higher rating? Well, essentially you have to fight and kill everyone that you meet. While this is not unusual in Eamon adventuring, I was left wondering what the Soviets would make of a truckload of dead guards and KGB officers, bomb or no bomb. Some special programming for special monster relations would have been a huge plus in this scenario. Secondly, the time limit is too short to find the bomb unless you happen to luck into it. While I don't have a problem with a short time limit, it offends me that there is no way (that I could discover) to figure out where to look. The Kremlin is a big place! Lastly, I personally favor Sword & Sorcery stuff and don't get real excited about contemporary settings, as a rule.

Eamonauts who enjoy adventures that offer some real texture to their scenarios may favor this one. Hack&Slashers won't find much here to kill and maim. The puzzles are all within the normal bounds of what can be done with embedded artifacts. Because of the time limit, you may have to play it more than once before you finally cover all the bases and manage to find and disarm the bomb. I give it a difficulty rating of (9) because of the game's complexity in relation to the time limit.

This is a pretty unique adventure and well worth a play; there's nothing else like it in Eamon.

You have once again been chosen to perform a great deed in the 35th century. Since your successful assassination of the Krell emperor, much progress has been made in liberating Earth’s former space colonies, but the fighting is bitter and the advances slow. A Krell scientist, Mordir Kang, has developed a doomsday device – the Zontar ray machine. This ray machine generates an anti-matter field which, when it touches matter, produces a dimensional inversion, sucking matter into the 8th dimension with cataclysmic results. Your mission is to locate Mordir Kang’s secret base, kill him, steal the plans to the ray machine, and destroy the device.

I first started playing this adventure with a wimpy guy and lasted 15 minutes. Well, says I, a hardier character is needed. How about the Mad Haranguer, hardiness 23, agility 28, charisma 16 – dead in 30 minutes. Uh-oh. Methinks this calls for drastic measures; in from the Stone-age walks Fred, hardiness 32, agility 17, charisma 4. (What he likes in speed, he makes up for in good-looks.)

Between getting lost in the desert, getting lost in the jungle, getting lost in the swamp (Fred isn’t the greatest with directions) and having the entire Krell empire after his buns with weapons ranging from rocket launchers to missiles (alas, poor Fred has a rock, a club, and a big stick), Fred decided he wasn’t having a very good day. If it weren’t for luck, a few tricks of Eamon and an altered heal spell, Fred would have been back in the Stone-ages as a fossil.

This adventure kept my interest during play, always having to get out of a tight situation. Some special effects are present, most notably the SAY command which is used to activate machines. Interaction with these machines is sometimes quite interesting.

I do have a couple of "gripes" with the adventure. The short descriptions do not have directions in them so when a room is re-entered, a LOOK must be done to find the exits (unless you can keep flawless maps). The names of the monsters are not in the long descriptions so something must be done (such as trying to leave) to get the short descriptions to print without getting attacked first. And last, but most frustrating of all, the POWER routine is unchanged from the original MAIN PGM (i.e. you hear sonic booms, tunnels collapse, the dead are brought back to life, and all wounds are healed. Realizing these may be personal pet peeves, I did not take them into consideration when rating the dungeon.

Overall, this is tough adventure. Not so much tough in problem solving as tough in surviving. One hint because I think you’ll need it: an XM-68x device will heal you once you acquire it, however it has a limited number of uses. This is indicated by a warning message that the unit is beginning to short-circuit. I discovered by method of flawless deduction, that I could perform a certain technical adjustment (not documented in the owner’s manual) by using normal standard commands that would remedy this problem as often as needed. Good luck!

Description: While sitting in a bar, you happen to overhear a conversation between two men sitting nearby. It turns out that these two work for Lord H.R. Bottomsmith, a man whose utter lack of scruples is at least as famous as his great wealth. As they talk, you realize that they are paid assassins, discussing an upcoming murder. They notice that you are listening!

As you leave the bar, you are hit from behind and knocked unconscious. When you wake up, you find yourself in a cheap hotel room. Beside you lies a dead body, and his blood is on your weapon! You realize that the assassins have decided to kill two birds with one stone, by framing you for the murder that they had committed!

The only way to clear your name is to travel to Lord Bottomsmith's castle, find the proof of this murderous conspiracy, and carry it to the local judge, before soldiers can arrest you. If they find you before you can get the proof to the judge, you'll hang!

Comment: The really unique feature of this adventure is the roving soldiers that are combing the town for your whereabouts. Like the description says, if they catch you, you die. They move from room to room and don't jump randomly all over the map. You can see them coming in time to get out of their sight. This feature was done well in a nicely realistic manner.

You have a couple of things to accomplish here. First and foremost is to avoid the guard. Next, you need to visit much of the town, looking for clues, companions, and supplies. Last, you have to travel to the castle and find the evidence. Good use is made of 6.0 features and I found little to complain about. The castle also has roving guards who move independently of one another.

There's not overmuch combat here, though you do need to dispatch the odd guard or slimy monster. The only puzzles are the finding of the embedded artifacts that you need, such as a torch. I give it a difficulty of (5). The roving soldiers were a really nice touch.

Description: 'Good day! We apologize most sincerely to those of you who have bought this program, under the impression it was connected in any way with the humorous television series, 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'. It is really an adventure based on World War I air heroes as compiled by Oscar Tritt.

'Good day! We apologize for the previous apology. That apology was unnecessary and appeared on this disk owing to an administrative error. This program is not as stated in the previous apology, but does contain material from the humorous television series, 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'.'

Comment: And so it goes. This adventure is largely a collection of bits and pieces from 'Monty Python' skits. If you are a fan of the show and can put the proper voices and emphases to the bits, you will likely enjoy it quite a lot. If you don't know 'Monty Python', it won't be nearly as good. Much of the adventure doesn't even try to be overtly funny, but makes references that Python fans will enjoy spotting.

Bring some big guns; the bad guys are fairly tough. On the other hand, you will pick up quite a few companions in your wanderings. I never once had to use the heal spell on myself, but some enemies took quite a lot of beating with my best sword before they fell.

There is some puzzling in the form of imaginatively-hidden keys and magic doorways that require the answer to a riddle before you can pass. Be sure to read descriptions closely and to examine likely-looking stuff mentioned in those descriptions; that's where the answers to the riddles will be found. Here's a puzzle hint for you: what word rhymes with 'ding' and 'dong'? Don't worry if this makes no sense now; it will be meaningful when the time comes.

I give this a (7) for difficulty, because you have to be on your toes to catch all of the puzzle clues. Apart from that, it's a pretty easy play.

Description: "A Gnome takes three hours to fill you in on the history of Blood Feud Castle and the rivalry between the Pozzis and the Spanners. Now he gets to his point. The evil Suedo Guru has stolen the Rod of Stupidity from the Royal Depository and he has taken up residence in Blood Feud Castle.

"Should you succeed in recovering the Rod you will be given the title of Knight of the Realm, and all will call you 'sir'. You may keep all possessions that you find, and that includes an amulet that has the power of increasing all your attributes!!

"Since this mission is quite difficult you will have the advantage of leaving the castle and returning to the Main Hall to heal, without disturbing the castle."

Comment: I have no idea what all that is about in regards to a feud. You see no one other than the Guru's guards and some oddball allies and monsters. There are a bunch of sporting artifacts lying about plus some other stuff which makes me think that it all might have something to do with wherever Rick was going to school at the time he wrote this thing.

It has 99 rooms and takes a while to explore. You have two options to save. As Rick wrote it, he intended that you save the game by returning to the Main Hall, and this does work well. When you relaunch the adventure, it picks up right where you left off. However, someone has also added the normal type of save routine. NOTE: see the bug fixes in this issue!

It's an OK Eamon but nothing special. Some of the bad guys are really tough, so be sure to pack your magical weapons. Between the tough guys and a couple of death traps, it gets a (7) for difficulty.

Description: "You have heard that a group of fighters have gathered in the Maze of Quasequeton. You know that they are lead by a man call the Master. You must find him and kill him. Good luck!"

Comment: And that is the introduction in its entirety. I think that it sums up the content of the adventure nicely. The dungeon map consists of a mere 18 rooms. No special effects. No secret passages. No companions.

This is classic 'hack'n'slash' fare: kill everyone you meet and grab anything that isn't nailed down. The poll ratings on this one range from (1) from a puzzle fan to (5) from a hack'n'slasher. It's very short and simple, but it's cleanly written.

It's very easy to complete. Being very simple and short, it may be a good choice for young Eamonauts.

Description: You are returning to the Inn and take a short cut, when you stumble over the bodies of several adventurers. Their arms and armor have been stripped away, but you search them anyway. On one you find a crumpled map and a note. The note vaguely mentions treasure and extreme danger. Your purse is a bit light so you follow the map. After a long trip, you close in on your goal. In the distance is a stone building. As you near the building, you spy a message engraved in stone:

ENTER YOU MAY, BUT HEED WELL POWER THOU MUST TO ESCAPE MAGIC THOU MUST TO DRAGONS FELL KEYS THOU MUST TO TREASURE TAKE.

You move on.

Comment: This adventure had a large, well-organized map. It is somewhat misnamed; this "house" is manor-sized with several dozen rooms, courtyard, wine cellar, etc. Combat wasn't especially bad for my advanced character's weapons. The inscription is partly right; you do need POWER and many keys to get past a number of obstacles. But the dragon wasn't too difficult with my magic-level sword, though he did take some wearing down. For a character with mundane weapons, there does appear to be a magical means provided to handle the dragon.

This is a nice, average-level adventure, certainly worth playing. There's no quest; this is strictly a kill and loot scenario. But it isn't a simple straight walk through. There are several locked doors, and the keys are not exactly lying by each door! I give it a (5) for difficulty.

Description: 'Welcome to the Slave Pits of Kzorland! In this adventure you will enter the slave pits in the hope of getting to the treasury vault. To get there you have to pass many guards and other creatures, some stronger than you and some not. You would be well advised to flee from some of the monsters and if you are not very strong, you should not even attempt this adventure.

No one can carry out all of the treasure you will find so you will have to decide what is worth more.

Comment: There isn't much else to figure out. the above is the entire introduction. The 3 types of monster named above very nearly describe the entire pantheon of bad guys here. More than 50% of the 'rooms' are of the 2-exit 'YOU ARE IN A N/S HALLWAY' variety. There are no puzzles. The adventure isn't as tough as it makes out, by today's standards; it is geared for a player with a Hardiness of 18. It gives the room exits in nearly all room descriptions & names, but misses a couple, which can really mess you up while mapping, especially since many of the room descriptions are of 'room name' lengths.

This is straight 'kill & loot' with an enormous reward for all the treasures. I give it a (3) for difficulty, because of the semi-tough monsters

Description: You received a letter from a friend stating he was in big trouble. On his way to visit you, he was riding through the province of Darland when he was stopped by the forces of the governor and questioned. He says he lost his temper and smarted off. Big mistake. This governor is somewhat of a tyrant. Now Jason (your friend) needs some gold to pay his fine and court costs. He asks you to bring some gold and free him. The fine and court costs are only 10,000 GP. And he says he needs to get out of here before he goes crazy. At the bottom of the letter are some little pictures that you recognize to be a code you used to use as scouts. It is a message that he didn't want his jailer to be able to read. It says, 'If you are going to try to spring me (rather than pay these butchers), be careful. There's a lot more guards than you think. It may be a better idea to be sneaky than try a full frontal assault.'

Comment: This adventure was troublesome due to a programming error. This adventure makes extensive use of embedded artifacts, which cannot be examined until the bug is fixed. (See Bugs & Fixes, this issue.) With the fix in place the adventure is much better. It has an interesting variation on a theme of infiltrating an enemy castle which seems to offer ways to reduce combat, but in practice I don't think that things happen in exactly the manner that John intended. I didn't notice much difference in the play when I followed the variation and when I didn't. Of course, if you are a dedicated hack-and-slasher, you can arrange to have plenty of combat. A weak character may have some trouble completing the adventure, but an intermediate or stronger character shouldn't be taxed too much. The adventure isn't too long, and much of it is superfluous to your task. There are a few typos and grammatical errors, but not so many as to be overwhelming. The hardest puzzle to solve is how to get into the castle at the start. Program recognition of synonyms at this point would have been helpful. This adventure is in John's typically humorous vein (i.e., emphasis on bad puns) and has one of the all-time classic monster names, Sir Render. I would say that it's a fairly average example of a 6.0 adventure.

Description: While sleeping behind the stables, you heard that a traveller crawled into town, all but dead, and barely made it to the doctor's house. You went to see the man. He was severely burned by magical blasts. The man didn't wake, but would mumble about the Sorceror's Spire.

The Sorceror's Spire is a school for wizards and the leader in mystical research. The dean, Xandar, was getting old, and was said to be working on an immortality spell in order to head off a power struggle after he dies. Whoever controlled the school would be the leading influence in magic for years to come. Being short on sense and long on guts you venture to the Sorceror's Spire to find out what is going on.

Comment: This is a very complex and difficult adventure. The plot is confusing, and the puzzles are not easy to identify or to solve. A saving point is that its use of magic is the best I've ever seen in Eamon. Your allies and enemies cast spells in combat, much more than the simple 'blast'. There's an impressive array of spells that the player can cast, for combat, as part of puzzles, and for other things.

The adventure was all very coherent and everything fit together very nicely. The puzzles all make sense, save for the main quest (reviving Xandar), which is difficult to even recognize, much less solve. I would have given it an (8) rating except for the extremer vagueness of this puzzle. You may or may not like this adventure, depending on whether you are able to recognize certain key elements of the plot.